COLUMBIA, S.C. — Ray Graham watched Marcus Lattimore’s career as closely as anyone. The Pittsburgh running back is accomplished in his own right, having established himself as one of the premier players in the Big East. But if game recognizes game, Graham saw the same thing in Lattimore that everyone else did: a supreme talent who lifted South Carolina football out of perpetual irrelevance.

So, when Graham received a message on Twitter from Lattimore last year, he was shocked and honored. Both players were in the doldrums, sidelined by devastating knee injuries that had cut short otherwise dominant seasons. Soon, two of the country’s best college tailbacks were carrying each other through the toughest times of their athletic careers.

“Some people try not to be bigger than who they are,” Graham said. “We’re all human. We all need each other. By Marcus doing that, that just shows you that he’s a very humble dude. I really appreciate that in him.”

It wasn’t just Graham, who went down 11 days after Lattimore. He reached out to Arkansas’ Knile Davis, who broke his ankle heading into last season. He sent messages to then-Notre Dame senior running back Jonas Gray, Florida linebacker Ronald Powell and North Carolina’s Giovani Bernard, who’d missed 2010 with a knee injury.

Part of it was panic. He was admittedly scared—“I knew it was bad”—the instant a Mississippi State player fell on his left knee. Tears of pain and fear streamed down his face as he tucked crutches under his arms.

But part of those Twitter messages and phone calls were to bring him calm and reassurance. He’d be OK. And for now, it seems as though he is.

“By the summer, he was 100 percent,” said South Carolina strength and conditioning coach Joe Connolly. “He was like Marcus of old. That’s a good thing. We’ve had a lot of time to get him back to where he needs to be. It’s been nice because he didn’t have to rush.”

Rather, he waited. Impatiently.

“I had to wait to run, wait to cut, wait to spin,” Lattimore said.

And eventually, wait to take his first hit in live action. Teammate Shon Carson and Lattimore together trudged through the ups and downs of ACL rehabilitation. Instead of using the hot tub only when he was sore, it’s part of his regular routine now. He stretches more, eats better. Lattimore’s knee was swollen and sore at times. His spirit was equally wounded.

For someone used to trucking over and through defenders, pulling away with bursts of speed, shouldering the team’s offense, the weight of his injury threatened to crush him.

“I kind of felt like it was a test, a test to see if I was going to break, to see if I was going to just give up,” Lattimore said. “Because there were times I did want to give up. But I felt like God was just testing my faith. I got through it and I’ve still got the love for God that I had. That’ll never change.”

The test now is whether he is a changed player. Through seven games last year, he’d rushed for 818 yards, well on the way to surpassing the 1,197 yards he compiled as a freshman. The Heisman Trophy spotlight was turning in his direction and he embraced the possibility. Today, he doesn’t even discuss that. There are more pressing triumphs.

In a drill in the first few days of camp, Lattimore lowered his pads and powered through a gamut of players determined the rip the ball out of his grip. On Wednesday, he took his first contact.

“There’s no thinking about he has a knee that was just operated on,” coach Steve Spurrier said.

Spurrier recalled as a backup quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers being on the sideline when Gale Sayers of the Chicago Bears injured his knee. “He never came back,” Spurrier said. In fact, Sayers did return, but another knee injury did end his career.

The point was, though, that medical breakthroughs have helped prevent ACL injuries from being career busters. That, and the psychological toughness to endure it all. Lattimore has that.

“Marcus is a special kid. He’s one of those guys who comes along maybe once or twice in a lifetime that you see as a coach,” Connolly said. “That’s the God’s honest truth.”

Lattimore says the injury is “something I’ll remember forever.”

It changed him for the better.

“Football is not going to last forever,” he said. “An injury can happen just like that and take away what you’ve been doing your whole life. It just put a lot of things in perspective for me.”